German for cake
by Marlowe97
Summary: "Sleep-deprivation is an enhanced interrogation-technique"


**Title:** German for cake  
><strong>Author:<strong>**marlowe78**  
><strong>Rating:<strong> PG  
><strong>Characters:<strong> Dean, Sam  
><strong>Word count:<strong> 999  
><strong>Spoilers:<strong> s7  
><strong>Warnings:<strong>Language, disturbing thoughts

**Summary:**"Sleep-deprivation is an enhanced interrogation-technique"

_a/n: I was looking for fics the other day that deal with Dean's issues in s7 (not the alcohol, not just) and I didn't find any. So I thought I'll write it myself. I thought about angst, and nightmares and all that. Had a good idea in my head about what I wanted._

This story is not that. But it was what my subconscious apparently needed, so there.

* * *

><p><em>„You know how they say sleep deprivation is an enhanced interrogation-technique?"<em>

_"Yeah?"_

_"Trust me, it's torture."_

**

Torture.

Torture. The German word for cake sounds the same. _Torte_. Why would one name awesome stuff like cake 'Torte'? Maybe the German cakes taste like torture? Maybe eating them is a form of torture? Maybe in earlier times, instead of cream they used whipped human body-fat for the filling, decorating them with nice, shiny, bloody eyeballs and the cherry-on-top is only a modern variation of the century-old recipe for torture-cakes.

Isn't there this weird woman on the net who blogs all her cakes? And aren't there faces on the cakes? He thinks he can remember there being little monster-faces on some of the cupcakes, he's pretty damn sure.

Weird, what people do with their food. Who would want to eat a face? Only the sadists, the depraved, uncaring, unknowing fools that seem to grow on trees these days, that's who. Fuck, now he's remembering the pretty assistant of that witch-guy. Bambi? Daisy? Something cuddly-cute like that. She baked. Bet she was decorating her heart-filled, bloody cupcakes with smiley faces, smiling happy faces of people condemned to be devoured, bitten, chewed. Eaten.

Dean blinks rapidly, trying to bring his focus back on the screen in front of him. But the words are blurring and there is this little dude, jumping from one letter to the next, running, running, hopping, and the diddly-doodley music is like a drill into his brain-stem.

On the bed, Sam's drifting into sleep only to jerk back up, eyes wide, muscles tense and Dean would swear he can hear his heart thump-thumping in his chest all across the room. It takes Sam a moment to come back to the real world – or is it the real world? Maybe it isn't real, maybe Dean isn't real? Maybe Sam's reality is the real one and there really is Lucifer singing lullabies.

_Sleep deprivation is torture_

No shit. Who'da thought. 'S not that he can't see that in every line of Sam's face, in the dark circles around his eyes, in the red lines through his eyeballs and the twitches, all those little ticks that developed these last … months?

And it's not that Dean doesn't know what to look for. He knows the signs and he knows torture. Damn, does he know torture...

He remembers, these days more than before. There was a time, a year maybe, where he'd been able to work over it, over all his issues with fire and pain that he'd developed in the pit, the fear and fascination and sheer lust.

He'd been good, really good. But then Sam fell into the Cage, and all that he'd buried... well, it's a Winchester Universal Rule: Nothing stays buried forever.

And now, Sam's twitching. And not sleeping. And moaning in his half-sleep, shaking his head and muttering with the mirror, and instead of helping him, Dean keeps seeing.

Seeing blood. Fire. Blades of steal, rusty, silver, golden blades, iron blades, blades to cut off eyelids and tongues, small, narrow blades to shove slowly, oh-so-slowly into the eyeballs and up into the brain, damaging but not killing, no, oh no.

He sees Sam, and all he can think of is _maybe he burned him in the Cage. Maybe he cut off his fingers, or tore out his nails._

He hears Sam whimper in phantom-pain, and instead of reassuring him that this is real, _ right, yeah, whimper, beg, pray to God who's not there, pray and it doesn't matter. Make sounds, lovely sounds, more, more, more._

He sees Sam's hands shake, and he thinks about _tying those hands down, with wire, nailing the twitchy fingers to the ground, sewing them to his legs, cutting them off with a bread-knife._

He can't stop it, can't help his thoughts straying to all the ways the devil would have hurt his brother, can't help imagining the worst – and trying to make it even worse than that. His brain won't freaking stop doing that, and that's bad, but it's not all, oh no. Because something keeps whispering into his mind: _What would you have done to him?_

Oh, the ideas. The possibilities. A soul, as fresh as Sam's, and all for him, to form, to paint, to destroy and create on his table... So much to do, so much. And yet, it hadn't been him, someone else had done it, had cut into his brother, destroying what belonged to him, him, him alone!

"Dean? You want some coffee?"

"Dude," Dean coughs. His voice's scratchy from disuse. "how much coffee did ya drink yet?"

Can you torture someone with coffee? There's no coffee in Hell, but it should work just as well as boiling water. Hm, pour it down his throat? Or... yeah, that. Or even cut open his stomach, cut deep, pour it in, hot and blistering, right into the stomach and see it work, see it move and swish and sear...

"Not too much. Think... uh, maybe … four cups?"

"More like fourteen, Trevor."

"Whatever. How much d'd you have?" Sam's pointing at the whiskey.

"Shut up." He swallows the whole glass, acidic burn down his throat and right into his liver. Maybe this time, it'll finally shut up the voice inside, his voice, dark and deep and twisted. Will make him sleep and be back on the rack for a night. If he's lucky, he'll stay there until the morning. Morning, when a new day begins, a new day to bury the taste of sorrow and despair deep enough that nobody can see – a new day to pretend he isn't counting the ways to remove a spleen, isn't drawn to fire like he'd once been to a sexy woman, and isn't contemplating all the ways to get Sam rest.

Eternally.

_Trust me, it's torture._

No need to trust you, Sammy. Because torture? Oh, he knows about torture.


End file.
